


Even Our Spoilers Have Spoilers

by greyathena



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, unless I'm a really good guesser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:30:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyathena/pseuds/greyathena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I would never have died - but it's a half-life.  It's not the same.  We're meant to die eventually, not to be saved forever, never changing."  River Song has been saved, but not without cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Our Spoilers Have Spoilers

**Author's Note:**

> I missed yuletide signups this year (again!) and I had an itch. I've never written Doctor Who before - and I'm POSITIVE this is AU - but I hope it's an enjoyable little read.

At first she was afraid to open her eyes - afraid she had just seen history about to be rewritten, that she would wake up to an unnaturally comfortable bedroom and a bed that wasn't hers - wasn't even real. That the real world had been only a dream, and the dream would be her reality again.

But when she opened her eyes she was on her bunk, and the bunk was moving, and everything around her was glass and steel and the cold, impersonal walls of an interstellar shuttle.

Cold and impersonal had never looked so good.

There was a porter in the hall when she finally worked up the courage to open the door. "The Doctor," she forced herself to ask, since procrastination wasn't going to get her anywhere. "Has he come back?"

"Don't think so, mum."

That didn't mean anything - the universe was still here, after all. She was still here. 

"Do you think he'd want to attend the memorial?" the porter asked.

"No," she said. "No, I expect that's the last thing he'd want." One thing left to check, then, to be sure of - "Do you know where they've brought the bodies?"

"The ship's created a cold storage. Off the sickbay."

She ignored the sick feeling in her stomach ( _"This is the Doctor's companion" - no, no, no_ ) and took off running.

* * *

_The children were playing - three children, then two. Then three? And then melting, everything around her melting, dissolving, except for the frightened face of one child and the pretty young - nanny? Was that right? And then -_ him.

Beaming. "Miss me?"

In years to come, she'd wish she'd thought of something pithy and witty to say, something worthy of her, rather than "what?"

Well, at least it was pithy.

He'd been _so_ proud of himself, grinning fit to crack his face open. His older-younger face, that had never been in this place before. She was disoriented, and it took her a while to catch on (there was a particularly humiliating bit where she repeated, "you _sent_ me? Like an email?" ten or twelve times), but eventually he got through.

That bloody screwdriver.

So yes, with years and years to think about it, and years and years of sulking about her death in the meantime, he'd finally figured it out. And he'd invited her to Darillium, and given her his screwdriver. Which he had rigged to save her to itself a split second before she died. Still-living body uploaded to the Library computer, and hello River, back from the beyond. Back to the very same Library, though he'd let years and then some go by before returning.

("When was Darillium for you?" she'd asked, and nearly smacked him when he replied, "Yesterday.")

She'd finally wiped the smug smile from his face, though unintentionally.

_"I knew I could figure it out, because you told me I had!"_

_"I what?"_

_"I thought you meant Clara wasn't dead, but you know I think she really_ was _actually - I mean, at the time, but what does_ that _mean - so of course you must have meant -"_

_"Who's Clara?"_

His face had gone a very satisfactory white, before he'd croaked, "Oh God. Spoilers."

* * *

The attack had been ugly and the sickbay was still full - burns, mostly, but a few who looked as though they were regrowing broken bones under the sickly light of greenish healing rays. She ran past all of them - the face she needed to see wouldn't be here among the living.

* * *

They were steps from the open door of the TARDIS, his supporting arm around her waist, when the sounds intruded - people, people calling to each other, the sound of equipment being moved, tools.

"Did they reopen the Library?" she'd asked.

"No," he'd whispered, "no, it's not safe, they're still here . . . why would anyone come to a planet still infested with Vashta Nerada?"

Shouts then, and screams for help.

"Get in the TARDIS and wait," he'd said.

"Like hell."

And just like that, they were running.

* * *

They hadn't been kidding about "cold storage" - the chill down her spine was not remotely metaphorical. She moved barely looking past gurneys carrying burned bodies, men who'd been shot and died mercifully quickly, and bones, empty bones arranged in the right order as if that would bring anyone any comfort. Toward the back, where they were still trying to identify the civilians.

The attendant stepped aside, and she saw the still, white face.

Then she was sure.

* * *

In the years before he'd dared to come for her, the years before a brand-new professor at a large military university had suddenly, inexplicably decided to lead an expedition to the Library - the Vashta Nerada had changed. And learned. They animated the bones of their victims, yes, and now they also used their tools and fired their guns. While students and civilian archaeologists ran and ran, some were taken by the shadows as immediate meals, but others were struck down by their dead fellows, shot and burned with their own weapons. And as if they had never stopped, River and the Doctor ran with them, each herding a separate group back toward their shuttle.

_("Professor_ Song _? Professor Song is dead, there's a plaque." "Never mind, just follow her!")_

Neither of them saw a skeletal hand raise a gun in the Doctor's direction until the very moment that arm was itself hit by a bright blast. The girl had been at River's right the whole time - a diminutive little thing, but she could run - and River never knew her name. But she fired and saved the Doctor, and then the skeleton turned and fired on her, and the girl fell, and others ran past her body onto the shuttle.

River was prepared to spare her a moment of respect and mourning before boarding the shuttle - the girl who'd saved the Doctor, without even knowing him - but then the Doctor's scream pierced the air.

He dropped to his knees by the fallen body, while River defended him from the oncoming attack. Groaning, "No, _no_ , it's not possible," hands fluttering over the dead girl's face, until finally River shouted, "Doctor - we have to go!"

"Yes," he said suddenly, his palm cradling the small face one last time before he got to his feet. "Yes. I have to go. I have to - River, get to the shuttle. I'll meet you there - _I swear_ \- I will be there."

And then he turned and ran. Away from the shuttle, away from her, back - she prayed - to the TARDIS.

* * *

The memorial was brief of necessity - who knew, really, what might be lingering in some of those bones - but it was touching in its way. Bodies were sealed away forever, solemnly sent off into the nearest star to become so much stardust. It was very, very quiet.

The Doctor did not come.

* * *

They gave her a spare bunk on the shuttle - a simple, spare room, and her first real-world shower in either several hundred years or a few days; it was really becoming impossible to tell. 

_(God, she hoped the Doctor still had her diary.)_

A nervous porter nudging an envelope into her hands - no, he had no idea how someone had managed to mail a letter to a dead woman to this particular expedition at this particular time. An envelope from another world, another era.

_If you are able to light the enclosed candle . . ._

Yes, it had been an ugly battle and she was tired and bruised, and strangers had fallen, and there were a lot of things she still didn't understand - but the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, the proper Doctor, was on his way back and she was alive and she was _giddy_ when she found herself dropped into a conference call with old allies. Familiar faces. Vastra, and Jenny, and - _oh_.

_This is the Doctor's companion._ An impossible face.

And a more impossible message.

And she had seen the one thing he would never be able to take, couldn't survive. _The Doctor's companion . . ._

So she watched, and feared - if this Doctor, one who didn't see her and still believed her lost - if he went to Trenzalore, if he fell there . . . then time would be rewritten, and she would wake up back in a comfortable bedroom, in a bed that was ever so slightly wrong. In a half-life that would never end.

She watched as Clara Oswald jumped, and then she thought she understood, but she still couldn't tell whether the feeling in her chest was hope or cold, dead terror. When the Doctor was involved it was so hard to tell the difference.

* * *

Would she ever grow tired of hearing those infernal squealing brakes?

The door floated open - right in her room, if you please - and he was there, weary, pale, but there. Proper Doctor.

"I've done it. Three days ago," she said before he could ask. "The conference call. I understand now."

"You didn't mean that I could still save you," he said softly. "You meant I just had."

"How is she?"

He paused, giving her a moment for her heart to sink. "She's sleeping," he said, and _thank God_. "She sleeps a lot. I imagine it'll pass. Happened to me once, when I regenerated badly."

They just looked and looked at each other, and then he said, "By the way . . ." and they were wrapping their arms around each other in possibly the tightest and most-delayed embrace in the history of the universe.

And she stepped into the TARDIS.

Clara was asleep in a pile of blankets right on the floor. "I left her at home initially," the Doctor said, hands twisting. "But anything might have happened."

"She might have woken up, and come here, and died?"

"Anything." His hands stilled, and he looked River in the eye. "When you came to the call. When you met Clara."

"I had just watched her die. Yes." She knelt by the sleeping girl. "But it was an echo, that's all."

"I couldn't . . ." He sank to his knees, then rocked back and sat down hard. "I had to see her."

"Of course you did." Over Clara's body she looked at him kindly. "But have you thought - how can she travel with you, when those echoes are going to be everywhere you go - every minute of your life, past, present, and future -"

"I've thought." He took a deep breath, but didn't speak.

River waited.

"She said," the Doctor said finally, "she said she'd seen all my faces. All eleven."

"So?" River prompted softly.

"So - everywhere she is, everywhere I am - _it's_ there too. The _Great Intelligence_. In my past, in my future - causing perfectly innocent people to suddenly visit the Library, piling up collateral damage - but now I know and I can stop it. All I have to do is find it, because it's everywhere I am. And I know I can, the same way Clara knew she could save me - because _I've already done it_. I must have. Otherwise, why, why did Clara not need to go any farther into my future? She never saw any face after this one - so either I'm going to die with this face, and not be able to regenerate, or she didn't need to go into my future because this ends before I change again." He rubbed his face with both hands, staring down at his feet. "Because otherwise . . ."

"You know her now. You'll recognize them, all of them."

"I won't watch her die over and over again." His voice broke. "I can't."

All things being equal - River was just plain tired. She settled her back against the TARDIS's wall and borrowed half of one of Clara's blankets. "Okay," she said. "So where do we start?"

The Doctor looked up quickly, caught off guard. "Don't you need to be somewhere? I thought - well, the university, maybe?"

"I'm _dead_ , sweetie. I don't think they're expecting me."

On Clara's other side, he too slipped under a loose edge of blanket, and yawned. "That's something we haven't talked about."

She shook her head. "No. I would never have died - but it's a half-life. It's not the same. We're meant to die eventually, not to be saved forever, never changing."

"I can't watch you die over and over again either."

"Lucky thing then that most of us only die once." She looked down between them at one of the world's most prominent exceptions. The impossible girl. "She's cute, you know."

"Oh, shut up."


End file.
